WASHINGTON: The conservative US Supreme Court will weigh a case on Wednesday challenging the ban on using public money to fund religious charter schools.
Nearly all 50 states already allow charter schools, which are privately managed but publicly funded.
But the Catholic Church in Oklahoma is vying to open the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school, Saint Isidore of Seville.
Named in homage to the patron saint of the Internet, a 7th century Spanish bishop, plaintiffs say the school would promote “parental choice, individual liberty, educational diversity, and student achievement.”
“Excluding religious groups from Oklahoma’s charter school program denies these opportunities and causes real harm,” plaintiffs add.
If the Supreme Court sides with the Catholic Church, taxpayer funding for religious education could see a huge uptick.
The separation between church and state is a bedrock principle of the US government, rooted in the First Amendment of the Constitution. The separation has been upheld in many Supreme Court decisions.
In the case before the court, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the creation of the school violates both US and state constitutions.
“A ruling for petitioners would eliminate the buffer this Court has long enforced between religious instruction and public schools, including in areas where charter schools are the only or default public school option,” the Oklahoma Attorney General has argued.
Six of nine judges on the conservative-majority Supreme Court have demonstrated support for extending religion into public spaces, particularly schools.
However, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has recused herself from this case, possibly because of connections to jurists advocating for the creation of contracted religious schools.
In 2022, the Supreme Court compelled the northeastern state of Maine to include religious schools in a system of public subsidies, saying their exclusion amounted to discrimination against religion.
The conservative majority also, in the same year, invalidated the dismissal of an American football coach in the Seattle area who prayed on the field.
The plaintiffs are represented by religious legal advocates Alliance Defending Freedom, who are expected to argue that the prohibition on funding schools will inhibit the First Amendment right to free worship.
Nationally, there were more than 3.7 million students enrolled in 8,150 charter schools during the 2022-2023 school year, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
US Supreme Court to weigh case about public funds in religious schools
https://arab.news/294yn
US Supreme Court to weigh case about public funds in religious schools
- Nearly all 50 states already allow charter schools, which are privately managed but publicly funded
- If the Supreme Court sides with the Catholic Church, taxpayer funding for religious education could see a huge uptick
Mass shooting at a South African bar leaves 11 dead, including 3 children
- Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital
- The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl
CAPE TOWN: A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 11 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the South African Police Services. Police didn’t give details on the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and the 11th died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
